History

Four Generations of Farming

The first one to come west, Great-grandpa Ray O’Neal arrived in Chelan in 1899 at age 18. After working in the saw mills for two decades, he had enough money to start the family farm in 1927. If you visit Vin du Lac winery on the north shore of the lake, the tasting room was his house, the vineyards his former orchard. Ray and his wife Annie raised five kids there, survived the depression, and built a thriving farm for the next generation.

After World War II, Grandpa and Grandma Toad and Jessie O’Neal bought into the home orchard. Grandpa also was an early member of the original “Sunshine Orchards” partnership, which planted the orchard on the land that is our current farm. The same year he bought into Sunshine, the home orchard froze and things got real tight financially. “We just tightened our belts”, Toad said, “but we made it.”

In 1969, Denny Evans and his first wife Linda (Toad and Jessie’s daughter) joined the Sunshine Orchards partnership, eventually buying the other owners out. Decades later, in the late 1990’s, Denny would go through his own lean years, nearly losing the farm.

The details of this saga are chronicled in the documentary Broken Limbs, produced by Denny’s son Guy. After making the movie, Guy returned to the farm in 2004 to help his dad—first expanding and revamping the roadside market and later, assisting in the fields and in the construction of the family’s on-farm winery.

With the focus now on a diversity of crops, instead of just apples, Rachel arrived on the farm as the manager of the market garden in 2006. A few years later, Guy and Rachel married and are currently deep into the work of transforming the farm into a viable operation for the next generation.

Little Jessie, born April 30, 2009 and named after her great-grandmother, is the first installment of the fifth generation of the family in the valley. We can’t wait to see what plans she has for the farm!